Twenty Years at
Baillie Gifford.
One Radical Idea.
James Anderson joined Baillie Gifford in 1983 and managed Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust for over two decades — turning a quiet Edinburgh trust into the definitive public-market proof of power-law investing. Every letter, essay, and interview from Scottish Mortgage to Lingotto, mapped into one knowledge base.
Browse Letters →“The investment industry suffers from accounting envy — a desperate desire to reduce the genuinely uncertain future to numbers. But the greatest returns come from companies whose futures cannot be captured in a spreadsheet.”
James Anderson · Aberration or Premonition?, 2018
Letters
24 essays — Aberration or Premonition?, Scottish Mortgage annual reports, Bloomberg MIB interview, and Lingotto commentaries.
Browse Letters →Concepts
8 ideas — power law returns, imagination in investing, patient capital, benchmark irrelevance, epistemic humility.
Browse Concepts →People
6 figures — Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Tom Slater, and the founders who define the transformative company.
Browse People →The Anderson Latticework
Ranked by frequency across all letters.
Selected Works
Scottish Mortgage Annual Report 2010
Last year we seemed to be terrible investors. This year we appear brilliant. All this comes about with the same process, the same portfolio shape, overwhelmingly the same investments and the same people.
Scottish Mortgage Annual Report 2011
The global economy has seldom been stronger. The pace of economic change has never been greater. We suspect that this will for investors. Preoccupation with unpredictable short term oscillations in economies and markets has opened upa deep gulf between the crucial determinants of economicprogress and speculative behoviour.It seemsmost unlikely that thefuture of theglobol economy and of intelligent siock selection lies in on obility to ponlificate about Greek,lrishcndPortuguese debt.One of the virtues of a global investment trust with access to long term
Scottish Mortgage Annual Report 2012
Each year the Amazon Annual Report incorporates the original Mortgage are more distant and our thoughts are far less profound than thoseof Jeff Bezos we think thisis an admirablediscipline. What follows is therefore a summary of how our investment approach has evolved over the last decode. We should be prepared to be judged by it in the years ahead. ssas sa ji jo y pas oi w sa py the competitive advantage of companies they are notoriously sandomness and mean-reverting characteristics of most such data.
Scottish Mortgage Annual Report 2013
We made few changes to your portfolio in 2012/13. We still own all of the top thirty holdings of a year ago. Market movements accounted for the bulk of the changes in the rankingsof thesestocks.Overallturnoverhasbeenlittleover1o%. Whilst equity markets have generally moved forward over theyear it has been a frustrating period for patient investors looking for strongly growing companies.
Scottish Mortgage Annual Report 2014
ehavemadefewchangestoyourportfolio.Westillownall but heofthe30largestholdingsoflastyear.Mosthavebeenin place for severalyears.Rathertooursurprisemarketshaveseen torewardmanyoftheseholdingswithsubstantialshareprice sesinthelastyear.Sixofthecurrenttop30haveseentheir harepnicesmorethandoubleinthelast12months.Twoare hinesetechnologycompanies(Tencentand thesoontobe quotedAlibaba)whilstthreeareinnovativeCalifornianventuresin the shape oflllumina,FacebookandTesla.Thelast,andperhaps most surprising.memberofthegroupisFiat.Fortunatelyallof these werelargeholdingsb